A husband and wife have an odd way to keep their marriage interesting: kidnapping and murdering innocent women.  But when their latest abduction takes some unexpected turns, and starts impacting their children’s psyches, the husband starts to question if he truly knows his wife and how much of their extracurricular activities are truly down to her.

This summer will be ten years since Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl was published and took the world by storm.  In the years since, there have been many novels that have been dubbed the “next” Gone Girl, and this novel, My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing, came to my attention via an article placing it as a descendent.  There is some shared DNA, the crazed woman driven to act by their husband’s infidelity, but this entry is missing some of the, I don’t know, heart? of its predecessor?  Not that it wasn’t an enjoyable read, but it didn’t really hold up to the comparison.  Which, after ten years, maybe its time to stop looking for the next Gone Girl and instead start looking for the next Gone Girl.